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A
Marketing Checklist for Freelancers and Consultants
By
Brian
S. Konradt, Owner and Operator of FreelanceWriting.com
Marketing can be as simple
as engaging in a one-minute conversation with another person or
as complex as a $3,000 direct mail advertising campaign. Everyone
has done some type of marketing in their lives - including you.
You may have sold things at a garage sale - that's marketing. Maybe
you recommended a friend to see a movie, which she did. That, too,
is marketing. At your last job interview, you talked about yourself
and how you and your experience could benefit the company - and
you got the job. That's marketing.
But marketing is more than
selling a product or service or yourself - basically, it's getting
the person or prospect interested in what you're selling. And that's
not so easy - unless you know exactly how to do it.
Most people know how to market
- but not everyone knows how to market effectively. When you mail
a prospective client a piece of your promotional material advertising
your availability as a commercial copywriter who is seeking work
and don't get a response, then that's marketing. But when the prospective
client responds to your promotional material and requests additional
information that leads up to work, then that's marketing effectively.
Marketing is probably the
most ignored and neglected function of operating a profitable commercial
copywriting business. Copywriters ignore or neglect marketing because
of the following reasons:
- Marketing must be
done on a continuous - if not daily - basis. That eats away
20-30% of your time each day. Instead of working eight hours
each day for clients, you really work five or six hours
each day for clients.
- Marketing is non-billable
time. When a freelancer stops working on his client's project
to do his own marketing, he does not get paid for his time.
- Marketing costs
money and can exhaust your time. A popular complaint among
freelancers is the lack of time to shoehorn daily marketing
into their daily schedules. Working on lengthy projects,
meeting deadlines, keeping in touch with clients and managing
a business can place a lot of strain on the writer. Because
of time constraints, many copywriters market their services
in short, quick "spurts" - that is, they mail out huge amounts
of promotional material at one time when only necessary.
- Beginners often
quit their marketing efforts too soon because they're not
soliciting responses immediately. And established professionals
neglect daily marketing because it's non-billable time and
their existing client-base may be funneling in referrals
and repeat work, so why market? Whatever you do, never stop
your marketing, even if you have plenty of clients, lots
of work and several paychecks in the mail. Stopping your
marketing at any time can cause sluggish sales, lack of
clients, and, potentially, a bankrupt business, in the coming
weeks or in the future.
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Marketing is the lifeblood
of your business. Your business does not grow, flourish or live
without marketing. Once you understand how to market effectively,
you'll increase your chances of running a successful, profitable
copywriting business (or any business), guaranteed.
Here's a checklist to market
any service or product effectively:
- Marketing is repetitious.
For your marketing to create impact, build rapport and establish
relationships with your prospects, your marketing must be
repetitious Ñ there is simply no other way. Plan on promoting
yourself to the same prospect at least five times before
you anticipate a response.
- Marketing must
interest the prospect about your product or service, not
just sell it. If you can't stir up interest about your service
or product, the prospect will junk your promotional material
in the garbage.
- Marketing must
be performed continuously, not infrequently. Avoid marketing
in spurts. "Marketing, to be effective, must be done on
a continuous basis - not when you feel like it or when you
need to do so," says corporate copywriter, Joan Berk. "When
you market in spurts, you put yourself at a risk of having
to wait for the results and scrambling around to find work
to meet payments. If you market each day - or at least every
other day - it's much easier to manage, keep track of your
results, and you won't put yourself in a state of panic
when you lose a client or fall short of a project. You'll
have many inquiries, leads and referrals on tap."
- Marketing creates
impact gradually - not immediately. Anticipate sluggish
results the first time you market your services, but don't
quit due to poor results. Marketing, to create impact, builds
up gradually, over time, not overnight.
- Marketing does
not focus on the product or service - but focuses on the
benefits of the product or service, or, in essence, how
the service or product can benefit the prospect.
- Marketing focuses
on soliciting a response from the prospect, not just the
work. If all you do is ask for work, most likely you will
not get it the first time around, no matter how qualified
you are. To increase the chances of the prospect outsourcing
work to you, you must also try to solicit a response, not
just the work. Have the prospect contact you to receive
your free business newsletter, or a free consultation, or
to review a piece of his material for free. When you solicit
a response, it brings you closer to securing work from the
prospect. Responses are nearly as important as getting the
work itself.
- Marketing sells
solutions, never your writing services. Prospects don't
care how creative and professional you write. They only
care about one thing: how your skills can solve their problems.
That's it. If you can't help the prospect solve his problem,
you won't get the work.
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As you put together an effective
marketing plan for your business, remember the following key points:
First, all marketing strategies
come down to one type of marketing: networking (or some form of
networking). Securing a client is a person-to- person confrontation.
It involves finding out the prospect's problems and needs, and then
fulfilling them. That's one reason why networking is the best type
of marketing around.
Secondly, you never sell
your services to prospects - you sell solutions to their problems.
They don't care how well you do something - they only care what
type of results you can produce for them that'll solve their problem(s).
Finally, marketing must be
repetitious to create rapport and establish a relationship - these
are two essential elements that turn prospects into paying clients.
Brian Konradt, bskcom@masterfreelancer.com,
is the owner and operator of FreelanceWriting.com (http://www.freelancewriting.com),
a free web site for writers who want to master the creative and
business sides of freelance writing.
Mr. Konradt is also the owner of BSK Communications and Associates,
a communications and mail-order business based in New Jersey that
operates MasterFreelancer Web Store (http://www.masterfreelancer.com).
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